Friday, August 11, 2017

Band Review: Sunsleeper

I like it when
synchronicity comes into the blogging.

Recently I posted New
Found Glory's "Head On Collision" for the song of the day, and saw
many comments on the video crediting the song for naming the band All Time Low.
That phrase is in the song, but it is also from David Bowie's "Ashes to
Ashes", which I had always thought was the source. (It seems to come up in
multiple songs as a subversion of the concept of an all-time high.)

That happening may have
caused me to pay more attention when I saw a Sunsleeper track called
"Break or Bury", which sounds like a reference to Dashboard
Confessional's "Hands Down".

I don't know that it is;
"Hands Down" is famous for being Chris Carrabba's happy song, and
"Break or Bury" is more of a downer. A connection is not impossible,
because Sunsleeper refer to themselves as "emo".

Actually, they call
themselves "emo rock", and there is a harder edge to the guitar than
many of their forebears have used. The music is otherwise low-key and unpretentious,
but with themes of loneliness and nostalgia (so pretty comfortably emo).

Perhaps none of this
matters much, but it was interesting to get an emo band to review as I am going
through a long stretch of daily songs from bands mentioned in Nothing Feels Good. (I started in March and it will probably go
into October.) Even as I study its past, emo continues to have a future. That
includes that Sunsleeper will pop up in the daily songs from reviewed bands
after I finish the Nothing Feels Good songes.

I also like that even
though Sunsleeper is from Salt Lake City, their one official video - for Break or Bury" - contains some
nice shots of Oregon's Multnomah
Falls.

It just feels like
everything is connected and it all works out. I suppose that attitude is
more folk than emo, but there are Weezer and Jimmy Eat World songs that work for it.